The Parallel CV

(Disclaimer: I started writing it as a short reflection and then it turned out to be very introspective, almost like an autobiography).

This Monday, as I was walking home from a concert of a very niche, and probably my favorite, band I started thinking about all the different and weird interests I developed in my life. I didn't get very deep in most of them. I didn't get to the level of an expert or even a consistent practitioner but it made me literate in so many things. I cannot do many things in these areas but I can appreciate many things because my ‘taste buds’ have been exposed to a very diverse bunch of ‘flavors.’

I have a thick parallel CV. And honestly, all of us have it. So here are the things that I was able to count in my head:

- hip-hop beatmaking - the very first money I made online was in was in 2006 when I had sold two beats for 30 bucks each via Western Union to some chap from the US I've met on Myspace

- working on voice and singing - I hated my voice so much that I read almost anything I could about voice and working on voice, I took many self-paced courses and worked with several speaking and singing teachers. I don't think my voice changed that much but I have better control of it and, what's even better, I learned to like it

- music, jazz more specifically, and free-jazz even more specifically - since I was probably 13 all my pocket money went on buying cassettes. I was an avid hip-hop fan. Then, exploring how hip-hop is made I learned about different types of music and fell in love with it. I ended up most interested in free-jazz and for some time around 10-13 years ago I was a kind of semi-professional jazz journalist writing about free-jazz events in Ukraine. I didn’t want to do it. I felt hugely unqualified. But no one else did it. And good people asked me to do it so I felt compelled to

- movies - it started with a late night Sunday TV show around 20 years ago where they were not only showing great artsy movies but talking about them. Sometimes it ended around 3-4 am so many of my working Monday mornings at that time were very sleepy but it was worth it. Since then I remember and I’m mesmerized by movies such as Point Blank, The August Rhapsody, The Last Picture Show, and many-many others. Apart from that TV show I discovered Hayao Miyazaki, Sidney Lumet, and Alfred Hitchcock and have been a huge fan of their movies.

- meditation - I’ve been meditating daily for at least 10 minutes for more than 10 years but I never had any structured learning and I never took meditation retreats such as Vipassana

- economics and Austrian economics more specifically - I founded the first site dedicated to Austrian economics in Ukraine

- spirituality and oriental religions - since can I remember I have been interested in everything mystical. I was reading whatever related to Indian religions and philosophy that was coming my way–-which honestly was not much. I also read quite a few Christian books for children, there was a comic book about Jesus Christ even. I read the Bible as well, almost the whole of it except for the part that looked like census numbers. Probably the biggest impact on me when I was a teenager was Carlos Castaneda's books. I read them voraciously both because of great stories and interesting ideas. Right now I don’t find them as attractive as they were back then. Later Robert Anton Wilson had a huge influence on me and still, influenced by him, I consider myself philosophically/spiritually/religiously an adherent of agnostic mysticism

- Ericsonian hypnosis - since I was a kid I thought of hypnosis as something cool, mysterious, and deep. So when I had an opportunity, I took several courses on Ericsonian hypnosis. After that I read about it probably more than I practiced it

- NLP as neuro-linguistic programming - when I was a kid one of my hobbies was to go to a book market and look at books. Just to look, not to buy. There I saw many books on NLP. But I wasn’t interested at all. Then I saw some videos of Frank Pucelik and found them very interesting and intellectually stimulating. I read quite a lot about it, took some courses, and still see some value in it but I don’t ‘use’ it to be honest.

- cognitive linguistics and general semantics - mostly through NLP I got a feeling for the language and use of language. I read some things about these topics and a lot of my coaching work is based on attention to the language. I also think that if I ever go for PhD it will be related to language

- aikido - I heard so many metaphors about aikido so I wanted to learn more about it. I took several classes in my hometown and then was taking classes for about a year when I moved to Kyiv. I’m not sure why I stopped. Perhaps because of logistics

- making books - I didn’t have that much money around 25 years ago but I wanted to read. So I was printing the pirated books and then made decent-looking homemade books out of these printouts. I think I still have a book on Japanese grammar somewhere with me

- accounting - that was my first education. It’s hard to translate it but I had something like a pre-bachelor degree in accounting and finance. I’m still pretty good with money. And it helped a lot in our bistro

- learning English - I have been learning it for more than 30 years and I’m still learning. Probably it was one of my best decisions. Especially intensely I was learning it when I had a part-time job as a night watchman during my Uni years. I was toting two huge English dictionaries to study words. I wrote at least 10 notebooks with words back then. I still learn new words these days. When Thor said ‘discombobulate’ in Infinity War several years ago it was one of the freshly learned words for me.

- psychology - that came from the feeling that something is wrong with me. And I wanted to understand what was it and fix it. Had I been more self-aware I would have gone to study psychology at Uni. But I was not. What I learned since then though is that it’s much more interesting beyond just fixing oneself and that of course there is something wrong with me (or rather that I have thoughts that something is wrong with me) but that’s absolutely alright and very human?

- poetry - that’s a cheesy one. A girl broke my heart. And I found consolation in sad poems about love. And then I just learned to appreciate poetry more and more. ‘Permit me voyage, love, into your hands’ is my favorite line--from Hart Crane's sublime Voyages

- programming and data modeling - well that was what I did for money primarily for about 8 years before mixing it more with managerial stuff

- running a restaurant - it’s so weird that we run it for more than two years already. I think of it as a calling. My wife and I felt that we must do it and we did. Not because of money but because we wanted to popularize Ukrainian food. Little did we know about the invasion that would happen in half a year…

- and coaching, of course - coaching is the thing that I’ve been so stubbornly loyal to. This December, it’s been 9 years since I finished my first coaching school and never-ever I had a thought that I should or could stop coaching. Even though for most of the first years of it I was investing a lot of time and money and not getting much back, I still felt I wanted to do it.

- oh, and video games - I was into RPGs twenty years ago. But it was too addictive. I was playing like 15 hours a day. I bunked off a month or so during my second year in the Uni playing Baldur’s Gate 2. So around 20 years ago I quit playing them and never played them again. Baldur’s Gate 3 which came out recently is quite a temptation.?

I didn’t plan this to make it such a long piece. But I found it immensely soothing and nostalgic to recall and write about these things. It’s interesting how they coalesce, cross-pollinate, and most of all, make me uniquely who I am. 20 or 10 years ago most of them didn't make any sense, but now I see how they all weaved in and enriched me.